New York 11

Upstate NY is every snowy dream. It is what the movies look to, to art direct cold, to paint Christmas, to make silence audible. The big city accumulation of noise is so out of the question that you can hear snowflakes whooshing past your ear. The crunching under my feet is the alpha dog in the hierarchy of sound.

I have been looking for home.

dancer Andrea Yorita rehearsing for the world premiere of The Boogeyman with BalletX photos: Bill Hebert

Lost in the giddy limerence of thinking I have found the “one”, I didn’t know towns like this were possible. A microcosm of a big city, each block is its own neighborhood. The streets are full of ideas. Hardly anyone is here, yet each one that is, contributes. They are building a community in the middle of nowhere.

And then three steps away there is wilderness. A labyrinth of winding roads lead to endless geometries of snow covered green. My best childlike self is vibrating an endless possibility of dreams of the future. My life will be folded into this vertical-pull-tab reveal of trees. A pioneer and adventurer building the treehouse I knew as a kid would someday be mine.

And there’s a train to New York City! Leaving from an old-timey train station where you can catch up with your smiling neighbors, then the perfect ride along the Hudson River with just enough time to empty my emailbox. Total immersion in the raging rapids that exist only there and then home again to sleep on a lazy river.

As someone who has lived his life as a gypsy (moth) and is drawn to the flame of ever-changing stimulus, I can imagine that this is as close as I will ever get to that in one place. The infinity of nature in depth and in four seasons. The trains that wind through otherwise unreachable corners. The new faces that enduring numbers of tourists provide as comets to crash into and change course. The lava flow of creativity from a community of artists who are all making good on the dream of the treehouse from childhood. These things are enough.